The recent global pandemic has been discouraging for many outdoor activities, but for cooking and baking enthusiasts, the time at home has been great! If you’re running out of ideas, or are just looking for some ways to practice your baking skills, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to find out ways to practice your baking skills while stuck at home!
Bake a Loaf of Sourdough
Baking homemade sourdough is all the rage right now. To make sourdough bread, you’ll need a starter—a mix of flour and water that naturally ferments. You can buy a starter, or you can make your own. Making your own starter is surprisingly simple, and requires just three ingredients: water, flour, and yeast. A good starter is essential to making your sourdough loaf taste sour.
In addition to a starter, good yeast is essential to baking with sourdough. Commonly known as baker’s yeast or budding yeast, saccharomyces cerevisiae is an ancient yeast used in all kinds of applications from wine-making to bread-baking.
Bake Banana Bread
Making banana bread is a delicious way to use up all those over-ripe bananas sitting on your countertop. Banana bread is easy to make because it uses many common ingredients. Additionally, banana bread is easier to make than sourdough bread because it’s a type of bread called a quick bread. This means it uses a leavening agent besides yeast and eggs, like baking soda or salt. While you must wait for traditional bread to rise and knead it several times, you can bake banana bread immediately after mixing it.
Make Some Home-made Muffins
Like banana bread, muffins are also classified as a quick bread, and so can be made relatively quickly. Making muffins from scratch is a great way to practice your baking skills. When making muffins, it’s important to mix the dry and wet ingredients separately so that your batter turns out smooth and evenly mixed. This is an essential step, regardless of the muffin recipe you use. You can make your muffins special by adding fresh fruit, nuts, or a crumble topping.
If you’re stuck at home, practicing your baking skills is a great way to become a better baker, as well as introduce some delicious new foods into your baking repertoire. After making sourdough bread, banana bread, and muffins, don’t be afraid to branch out and try baking some pastries, cakes, and cookies. Have fun!
Feeling adventurous while cooking at home? Try some of these recipes
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